Promotor: Prof.dr. J.A. Bouwstra, Co-promotor: Dr. A. El Ghalbzouri

Humans share meaning through language. Over time, repeated interactions have shaped languages into forms that match our cognitive preferences, making them structured, expressive, easy to learn, and ultimately, meaningful.

A new research line is the development of liquid biopsy fingerprints to predict early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) stage in human in readily accessible body fluids in human (in collaboration with: Dr. Geert-Jan Groeneveld, CHDR; Prof. Elga de Vries, Free University Medical Center; and others).

How can archaeological datasets reveal the interplay between past indigenous understandings of the surrounding world and resilient and sustainable ways of life in the Isthmo-Colombian Area?

The routine assumption that Upper Palaeolithic early modern humans in Europe were regular fire users who produced fire at will has never been tested against the archaeological record. Utilizing literature, database and microwear analytical approaches, this project seeks to establish the role and forms…

Wednesday morning, the faculty was teeming with newly arrived international students, who will be starting their master’s programme or exchange programme next week. Over 150 students took part in the Introduction Morning of the Faculty of Humanities.

From a catastrophic fire to a flood that engulfs the earth. Mineke Schipper, Professor Emeritus of Literary Studies, has collected myths from the four corners of the earth about the end of humanity. These have inspired 30 striking paintings by Japanese artist Yuriko Yamaguchi. The Dutch premiere of…

What does it mean to be human in a system that no longer simply serves us, but often acts upon us? That question is at the centre of “Humanity in the Automated State,” a Blog Post Symposium published this week as a DigiBook by The Digital Constitutionalist (DigiCon).

Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas: Symbiotic Indigeneity, Commoning, Sustainability showcases how the eco-geological creativity of the earth is integrally woven into the landforms, cultures, and cosmovisions of modern Himalayan communities.

The writings of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) are famously and purposely marked by fragmentariness. Paradoxically, a central aim of his work was to connect: all his life he sought to further the integration of scholarship in the humanities which, he believed, had too long suffered from the prevalence…

Heart failure is a major health care problem with high mortality.

Leiden University and China import partner.

BACKGROUND: Explant human skin equivalents (Ex-HSEs) can be generated by placing a 4mm skin biopsy onto a dermal equivalent. The keratinocytes migrate from the biopsy onto the dermal equivalent, differentiate and form the epidermis of 1(st) generation Ex-HSEs. This is especially suitable for the expansion…

Using brain imaging to discover the area in the brain that recognizes emotion.

Have you ever stood in front of an abstract artwork and thought: “a monkey could have done that!”. As it turns out, you are wrong.

Pericytes, the mural cells of blood microvessels, are important regulators of vascular morphogenesis and function that have been postulated to mechanically control microvascular diameter through as yet unknown mechanisms.

On the 2nd of September Jiyan Qiao successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

During the next three years, 6 promising researchers from the Faculty of Humanities who have just been awarded their PhDs will be able to further develop their research ideas funded by a Veni grant from the NWO. A total of 147 Veni grants were awarded of which 14 went to researchers at Leiden Univer…

When do fire making tools appear in prehistory, and how might the use of these tools manifest in the archaeological record?

Transplantation of labial salivary glands to the eyelids for patients with dry eye appears to give excellent results clinically.

How are the epidermal lipid pathways involved in health and disease.

Promotor: Prof.dr. M. Danhof, Co-promotor: O.E. Della Pasqua

Human skin equivalents (HSEs) can be a valuable tool to study aspects of human skin, including the skin barrier, or to perform chemical or toxicological screenings.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

The central question in this book is whether there is a human right to family unification.

In store is now the Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights Law edited by prof. Janice Bellace of the University of Pennsylvania and ass. prof. Beryl ter Haar of Leiden University. The book is publisehd in Edward Elgars series on Human Rights.

This project studies how Islamic charitable networks in seeking to address global needs position themselves as universalist projects, entangled with Western humanitarianism and neoliberal welfare regimes. It seeks to understand how and to what extent contemporary transnational Islamic charitable networks…

The high prevalence of pure red cell aplasia in Thailand has been associated with the sharp increase in number of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) copy products, based on a classical generic regulatory pathway, which have entered the market.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have died as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the continuing armed conflict. Many forms of critical infrastructure have been destroyed. Much of this devastation has been caused by weapons that utilise forms of artificial intelligence…

Almost three years after receiving her honorary doctorate, Dr Graça Machel returned to Leiden University. Over the course of two days she spoke with students, researchers, and other interested persons, about human rights – particularly those of women and children – in a world in which these are continually…

Seminar 12th of April

Supervisor: Natalia Ortiz Zacarías

On 24 January an interdisciplinary workshop organised by Anna Smulders, PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, and Tarlach McGonagle, Professor of Media Law and Information Society, took place on the interaction between disinformation, emerging technologies and human rights.…

What do scholars do when they talk about virtues (impartiality, accuracy) or vices (dogmatism, prejudice)?

In the studies described in this study, we introduce a novel ex vivo human skin barrier repair model. To develop this, we removed the upper layer of the skin, the stratum corneum (SC) by a reproducible cyanoacrylate stripping technique.

This subproject of 'From Homo Economicus to Political Animal' will be on ancient analogues for modern-day “ersatz economics”, the economics of the “man in the street”.

The project investigates the implementation of policies and practices related to reconciliation and the strengthening of government capacity in the Odesa and Kharkiv regions of Ukraine.

On 22 March 2016, Prof. Carsten Stahn spoke on prosecuting Human Trafficking as a Crime Against Humanity at a Conference on International Criminal Justice, hosted by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Judicial Civilization of Zhejing University in Hangzhou, China.

On Wednesday 5 October the Europa Institute hosts a special guest lecture by Human Rights Defender Mr. Rasul Jafarov from Azerbaijan.

On 21 Januari 2020, Patrick van Berlo defended his thesis 'Human Rights Elephants in an Era of Globalisation: Commodification, Crimmigration, and Human Rights in Confinement'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.P. van der Leun and Prof. M.A.H. van der Woude.

To celebrate the end of the semester the Science and Humanities Buddy Programme organised a barbecue together, which has become a small tradition. The barbecue marks the third co-organised activity between the two Programmes and helps to bring international and Dutch students together. The Buddy Programme…

Clinical development of drugs for central nervous system (CNS) disorders has been particularly challenging and still suffers from high attrition rates.

This is a joint PhD of the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Leiden University and the Evolutionary Ecology Group at Antwerp University.

Canadian Roméo Dallaire (1946) was UN Commander in Rwanda at the time of the genocide there, subsequently becoming a champion of human rights. He has worked as a researcher at several different universities, and was a senator in Canada for nine years. Dallaire will give this year's Cleveringa lecture…

Human-driven environmental damage is increasingly recognised as a global crisis. Should large-scale destruction of ecosystems be considered a crime? The concept of ecocide has gained renewed attention, particularly following a proposed definition for inclusion in international criminal law, raising…

Investigating epistemic and ethical practices in medical experimentation on humans in the colonial period in Southeast Asia.

How have human-environmental entanglements changed in the Gulf of San Miguel, Darien, Panama, from the first traces human practices through to the present?

LUCIR aims to bundle together, strengthen and disseminate existing research in the field of international relations.